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C00002 00002	John Boli in a June 22 article advocating unilateral disarmament, writes
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John Boli in a June 22 article advocating unilateral disarmament, writes
that we needn't fear Soviet occupation of the United States, because
"Picture the scene they would face, invading and trying to control the
territory of the rugged individualist American cowboy.  In every
saloon, behind every cactus, a Gary Cooper with two six-guns
eager for action.  Lurking through every office
building or dark alley, ...  Raiding every supply depot,
ammunition dump, and Russian troop barrack, a Green beret ... ."

While Mr. Boli fantasizes more than most people, I fear that many have
a similar romantic notions of what Russian occupation would be
like.  My own imagination runs in gloomier channels, and anyway there
is plenty of history of Soviet occupation of other countries and Soviet
terror against resistance in their own.  Here are some historical items
to contemplate.

	1. In 1918, a student shot the head of the secret police in
Petrograd (now Leningrad).  In reprisal, The Soviets arrested
and killed 2,500 "members of the bourgeoisie".  They
didn't bother saying that any of the 2,500 had anything to do with the
shooting.
My gloomy imagination suggests that whole cities might be nuked in order
to discourage the Gary Coopers in the others.

	2. The Russians were in the war against Japan for seven days
before the Japanese announced their surrender.  They took
600,000 prisoners for slave labor in Siberia, and many of them weren't
released for eight years.  The Soviets consider that Americans
make good workers.

	3. The late Mr. Suslov was responsible for the "restoration
of Soviet power" to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia at the end of World
War II.  One of his methods was to replace a quarter
of the population by Russians.  The displaced Lithuanians went
to Siberia, and many didn't survive.
Many Russians would be happly to help rule America.
Exchanging say 40 million might be required.

	4. Since whatever conflict led to the occupation would be
our fault, we could scarcely object to their taking a substantial
part of our industrial plant as reparations as they did in Manchuria.
Incidentally, when the Soviets are in a position to do so, they take
rather strong positions about what constitutes unfriendly acts.  In
the case of Finland, this includes press criticism of the Soviet
Union and failure to return people who escape across the frontier.

	5. As foreign invaders often do, the Soviets would come as
"liberators" of some part of the American people, and would recruit
collaborators among the partisans of these causes.  The collaborators
would soon learn that their causes were secondary to the comfort
of the invaders.

	6. Finally, Mr. Boli's objective in unilateral disarmament
is peace, but he mightn't even get that.  Communism is a quarrelsome
ideology, and communists fight among themselves as soon as they
conquer the non-communists.  Whenever the leader
dies in the Soviet Union, there is a danger of civil war.  Mr. Boli
might yet find himself a draftee from an expendable country in
a fight between two gangs of communists about issues he couldn't
even understand.

	Deterrence has avoided war for 37 years.  It seems unduly
risky to abandon it now.